Researchers in have found that people who frequently use first-person singular words like "I," "me," and "myself," are more likely to be depressed and have more interpersonal problems than people who often say "we" and "us."

Seems self-selected since they drew their sample from a psychological clinic. I'm guessing men are much less likely in Germany to admit to depressive illnesses and so don't go to clinical settings such as those?

Baseless? Interesting... A poster above points out the study consisted of an insignificant number of participants. Having not bother to read the study i can only presume either they all came from the same clinic, or the sampling was just piss poor.

Lets reverse it for a moment, since you don't seem to be able to provide any reasons of your own on why the study isn't worth taking seriously.

The researchers atested a bunch of people, with varying degrees of use of personal versus collective pronouns, and found that those who used personal pronouns more often were more depressed. Bam, boom, done.

What about that exactly do you have a problem with?

Your kneejerk idiot reaction to sample size has nothing to do with anything as the researchers make no claims to generalizability to all humans.

Hey i know, i can set up a lemonade stand outside of a football game and test a bunch of people by giving them a choice between orange and lemonade, then record which team they were going for as they leave.

I should be able to conclusively tell if depressed people like orange flavour more than lemon flavour.

It's genius! And it would probably have a sample size more than ten times that of the study we are talking about. Bam, boom, done.

Hey i know, i can set up a lemonade stand outside of a football game and test a bunch of people by giving them a choice between orange and lemonade, then record which team they were going for as they leave. I should be able to conclusively tell if depressed people like orange flavour more than lemon flavour.

Are you claiming that the test the researchers used to measure depression is as emptyheaded as the one you've designed here?

If so, can you start by letting me know that you have some idea of what the experimental protocol was?

This research is discussing verbal expression of self perception, it is not suggesting the language is affecting self perception itself. This is not a case of sapir-Whorf phenomenon where language is shaping self-perception. The research in their sample people with social problems tend to use certain pronouns more.

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